4 months and getting some shut eye!!

So the little eagles turned 4 months old last weekend!!  Where has the time gone?!?  I fall a little more in love with them everyday and I love the little people they are starting to become!!

Chase is now 14lbs 7oz and Cassidy is 13lbs 12oz and they are doing great!!

Some of their new tricks involving rolling over (Chase, Cass will roll on her side), talking a lot, putting their hands in their mouths, batting at toys, sitting up assisted, and lots of smiling!!  We made the change from swing and vibrating chair to jumperoo and exersaucer and they love their new pieces of equipment!!  We also tried giving them some rice cereal which they did not like so much.  I am still breastfeeding in the early AM (5-5:30AM) feed and evening and/or dreamfeed (6-700PM and 10-11PM).  They are getting mostly pumped milk at daycare as well as a little formula so that I can continue to build up my freezer supply.

At their doctor's appointment on Monday, our pediatrician thought that they looked great.  She also offered some advice re sleep training.  It seems she is a proponent of CIO.  She basically told us that at their age and weights the twins should definitely be able to go between 6-10 hours without eating.  She recommended that we continue with our 7:30(ish) bedtime, dreamfeed at 10-11pm, and then not go in their rooms until after 5am. She said one that will help is that we can try taking away their pacifiers so that they can learn to fall asleep on their own without any sleep props at all.  Then, she said we could think about slowly dropping the dreamfeed in a few weeks once they are reliably going to bed and staying asleep until after 5am.

It's nice to have a pediatrician recommending some sleep training and I know that the twins will be better served in the long run if they learn how to sleep well now, but it is so hard to hear them cry.  We have started by taking their pacifiers away (which I miss also because the little wannanubs were so cute!!).  They have been doing well falling asleep without them with just a little bit of fussing.  The real test comes at 1-3am when one of the babies wakes up and starts crying.  We let them cry last night and it was terrible (for me).  I think it was about 25-30 minutes of crying for each of them, but they were staggered so it was a total of an hour of crying (as soon as Chase fell asleep, Cass woke up) and CJ and I both woke up feeling terrible.  As soon as they work up again at 5:05 this morning, I fed them both and you know what, they were super smiley and happy...and a little tired (because they didn't get a large chunk of straight sleep time).  Overall, it wasn't too bad and I'm hoping for a lot less crying tonight!!

I'm on board with the CIO because our pediatrician, who we love and trust, recommends it and I've seen the difference in children and parents between no sleep training and solid sleep training.  My sister who is an amazing mom, has never done any sleep training and her son constantly climbs back into bed with them and wakes them up and her 14 months old is still getting up at least once in the middle of the night and it takes quite awhile to get her to go to bed (lots of rocking and soothing).  I love cuddling my kids, but I also want to give them the skills now to be good sleepers!!  One of my best friends, followed Babywise strictly and her child is very happy and sleeps for about 12 hours/night.  The benefits of nighttime sleep are for the babies as well as for CJ and I so that we can have time to continue to enjoy our relationship and some adult time in the evenings.

We'll see how it goes!!